Vaccine Safety

Vaccine Safety Education is something that I feel very strongly about. It is my belief that choosing to vaccinate your children is a very personal one and that every parent has the responsibility to educate themselves on the risk and benefit of vaccines for their family. For me, this has meant finding out what shots are given, their ingredients their corresponding effects, the risk of adverse reaction, and the benefit the vaccine could offer. I also researched the diseases symptoms, complications, treatments, and the number of cases per year in the US. As a military family who is constantly on the move, it is important to us to be aware of what the risks are for each place that we move to in order to make the best decision for us and our family.

I have started compiling links to medical reports, government agency pages, opinion pieces, blogs and other resources. This is by no means a complete list of resources to use for your own research. This is an ongoing search and this page will be updated periodically as more recent information is available.

THE BASICS

CDC Vaccine Schedule This is the CDC vaccine schedule for babies and children, once you are aware of what vaccines are on the schedule you can start researching each vaccine.

Vaccine Ingredients Here is the list of vaccine ingredients from the CDC. Some ingredients aren’t published due to patenting protection so there may be ingredients that are unlisted.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8473002 “Treatment with Tween 80 accelerated maturation, prolonged the oestrus cycle, and induced persistent vaginal oestrus. The relative weight of the uterus and ovaries was decreased relative to the untreated controls. Squamous cell metaplasia of the epithelial lining of the uterus and cytological changes in the uterus were indicative of chronic oestrogenic stimulation. Ovaries were without corpora lutea, and had degenerative follicles.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21568886 “Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”

MSDS for Thimerosol “Potential Acute Health Effects: Hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation. Slightly hazardous in case of eye contact (irritant). Severe over-exposure can result in death. Potential Chronic Health Effects: CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available. MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. TERATOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available. DEVELOPMENTAL TOXICITY: Not available. The substance may be toxic to kidneys, liver, spleen, bone marrow, central nervous system (CNS). Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage. Repeated exposure to a highly toxic material may produce general deterioration of health by an accumulation in one or many human organs…. Exposure Limits: TWA: 0.1 from ACGIH (TLV) [United States] [1995] Consult local authorities for acceptable exposure limits.”

Thimerosol is by far the most famous of vaccine ingredients. Beginning in the 1990’s there were concerns the Thimerosol was contributing the large increase in Autism Spectrum Disorder cases in the United States. Since that time, Thimerosol has been removed from several childhood vaccines, but it remains as an ingredient in several others including the Flu Shot (See Package Insert links below for more details).

It also concerns me that the MSDS sheet does not list the Carcinogenic Effects of this substance. Further searching found that they just don’t know what the effects of Thimerosol are and that it warrants further study. In fact, according to another study found on PubMed, “Other mercury compounds and metallic mercury have not been tested adequately in experimental animals…However, the sparse epidemiologic data point toward the possibility of a risk of lung, kidney, and central nervous system tumors. Better data are needed on the carcinogenicity of mercury and mercury compounds in humans and experimental animals.”

PACKAGE INSERTS

As a patient and a parent you have a right to informed concent. Doctors are REQUIRED by law to provide to you the drug insert for each vaccine prior to injection and allow you the time to read the entire thing. Most people do not read them, but there is extraordinarily important information in those inserts! Here is a list of the package inserts

VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION

This is a chart of recognized compensated for vaccine injuries, because vaccine manufacturers have been given legal immunity, a vaccine court has been set up to compensate for injuries known to be caused by vaccines, however it is extremely difficult to win a case.

Transcripts from court case re: vaccine injury “[n]o vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side-effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.”

MEASLES “During 2011, a total of 222 measles cases (incidence rate: 0.7 per 1 million population) and 17 measles outbreaks (defined as three or more cases linked in time or place) were reported to CDC, compared with a median of 60 (range: 37–140) cases and four (range: 2–10) outbreaks reported annually during 2001–2010.” According to the US Census Bureau, The estimated population of the United States in 2011 was 311,591,917 making your chances of contracting measles in 2011 0.0000071247% In 2011, the same year, there were 2,730 adverse reactions posted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for the MMR & MMRV vaccines. Of those, there were 8 deaths reports from the MMR &/or MMRV vaccine. http://vaers.hhs.gov/index VAERS ID #’s for deaths from MMR & MMRV: 416893, 428370, 429528, 432209, 436253, 436743, 440919, 445693

MUMPS According to The World Health Organization, there there 404 total mumps cases in the United States in 2011, making your overall risk for 2011 0.000001297%. There have also been various outbreaks, the most notable of which were in 2006 and 2009 with 6,584 cases and 1,521 cases respectively. The 2006 outbreak was heavily concentrated on Midwestern US College Campuses and as of the report released by the CDC on October 27, 2006: “Of the 5,783 cases, 3,113 (54%) were confirmed, and 2,612 (45%) were probable; for 58 cases (1%), classification was unknown. Six states reported 84% of the cases: Iowa (1,968), Kansas (904), Wisconsin (750), Illinois (591), Nebraska (357), and South Dakota (288).” I could not find information to confirm where the index case came from for the 2006 outbreak; However, the 2009-2010 outbreak index case was imported from the UK.

PERTUSSIS According to The World Health Organization, there there 18,610 total pertussis cases in the United States in 2011, making your overall risk for 2011 0.00005973% According to the CDC, “Infants are at greatest risk for getting pertussis and then having severe complications from it, including death. About half of infants younger than 1 year old who get pertussis are hospitalized, and 1 or 2 in 100 hospitalized infants die.” However, they also warn that, “Getting sick with pertussis or getting pertussis vaccines doesn’t provide lifelong protection, which means you can still get pertussis and pass it onto infants.” What interested me the most of this information, is that on the WHO website, you can see a large increase in Pertussis cases from 2002 to 2003, jumping from under 10,000 cases to over 10,000 cases per year. What has caused this increase in cases? The DTaP injection was licensed in 2005 according to the CDC, and the number of cases still remains above 10,000 per year. In fact, in 2005 the number of cases of Pertussis was 25,616 (WHO).

POLIO According to The World Health Organization, there were 0 total cases of Polio in the United States in 2011, making your risk of Polio in the United States in 2011 0% “The last cases of naturally occurring paralytic polio in the United States were in 1979, when an outbreak occurred among the Amish in several Midwestern states. From 1980 through 1999, there were 162 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported. Of the 162 cases, eight cases were acquired outside the United States and imported. The last imported case caused by wild poliovirus into the United States was reported in 1993. The remaining 154 cases were vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV).”

Even with these low risk projections, many people say, “well, that is because so many people vaccinate!” I think that attributing the elimination of disease wholly to vaccination would be a fallacy. The increased level of sanitation practices in the United States, the availability of clean drinking water, the introduction of proper diet and exercise, and the overall understanding of health and wellness in the 20th century had an enormous impact on the decline of these diseases. As I continue to learn more about our immune systems and how they function, I am starting to understand more about how vaccinations can cause harm and damage to our systems rather than making them better. Our bodies are designed to eliminate diseases through a natural process, and by altering that process by direct injection we are not only exposing ourselves to toxic ingredients, but we are also not allowing our bodies to exercise a very important immunological function of developing natural immunity to disease.

BOOKS

The Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners, 2nd Edition: Guide to Immunization Risks and Protection by Dr. Neil Z. Miller. “The Vaccine Safety Manual (new, updated 2012 edition) is the world’s most complete guide to immunization risks and protection. It includes pertinent information on every major vaccine: polio, tetanus, MMR, hepatitis A, B, HPV (cervical cancer), Hib, Flu, chickenpox, shingles, rotavirus, pneumococcal, meningococcal, RSV, DTaP, anthrax, smallpox, TB, and more. All of the information, including detailed vaccine safety and efficacy data, is written in an easy-to-understand format, yet includes more than 1,000 scientific citations. More than 100 charts, tables, graphs and illustrations supplement the text. This encyclopedic health manual is an important addition to every family’s home library and will be referred to again and again.”

The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child by Dr. Robert W. Sears. “THE VACCINE BOOK offers parents a fair, impartial, fact-based resource from the most trusted name in pediatrics. Dr. Bob devotes each chapter in the book to a disease/vaccine pair and offers a comprehensive discussion of what the disease is, how common or rare it is, how serious or harmless it is, the ingredients of the vaccine, and any possible side effects from the vaccine. This completely revised edition offers, updated information on each vaccine and disease, more detail on vaccines’ side effects, expanded discussions of combination vaccines, a new section on adult vaccines, additional options for alternative vaccine schedules, a guide to Canadian vaccinations. THE VACCINE BOOK provides exactly the information parents want and need as they make their way through the vaccination maze.”

DOCUMENTARIES

The Greater Good An award winning documentary exploring modern social and medical issues surrounding vaccination.

INTERESTING ARTICLES, BLOGS AND ONLINE RESOURCES

General Information

Leicester, UK: Vaccination Vs Sanitation The success of the City of Leicester, England was remarkable in reducing smallpox mortality substantially compared to the rest of England and other countries by abandoning vaccination between 1882 and 1908. See especially page 432 in the book, or screen page 456 in the online reader version. “small pox death rate for children under ten was 6,398 less per million living at that age than it was when we were supposed to be fully “protected”…”

DTaP and Pregnancy: See especially slide number 13. Although the CDC recommends this vaccine during pregnancy, 132 of 106,573 VAERS reports after Tdap vaccines involved pregnant women (January 2005-June 2010) 16.7% of which were spontaneous abortion.

The intent of this page is to raise awareness about the various aspects of vaccination. This presentation is not to be construed as medical or legal advice: locate and confer with a trusted physician and lawyer.